Who created Sentry?

Mr. JenkinsI'm hoping you can help settle a little internet dispute I'm having. Who created Sentry? Obviously it wasn't Stan Lee and Artie Rosen. I say you and Jae Lee as I haven't seen any evidence to prove otherwise, but the opposition claims that it was Joe Q and Bendis, who handed it off to Jenkins to write, ignoring the fact that Bendis didn't start writing for Marvel until a year after the first mini came out. I know Bendis worked for Wizard at the time and may have been involved in the hoax, but I can hardly see this as creation. Could you please give us the rundown on who really created this character?

Current Sentry is basically Superboy Prime, you can thank Elliot Maggin and Geoff Johns for that garbage. The Sentry has all of Emoboy Prime's powers but instead of retcon punching the Sentry pulls other plot devices out of his ass. Sometimes the plot devices are these big black Japanese tentacles

Because we've had a rash of locked duplicate threads. If you can't duplicate a thread and can't resurrect and old thread, then I guess subjects are only allowed to be discussed once in the entire history of the forum?

And to the originating subject: while Sentry has a pair of creators in a writer and an artist, he's always struck me as the sort of thing that could only be created by a committee.

Rick Veitch created the Sentry, no doubt his work was inspired by the Triumph, MiracleMan and Superman stories

http://www.rickveitch.com/?s=sentry

Jenkins and Veitch used to brain storm back in the day, when he got the chance to go with a story he then ran to Marvel with the sketches his old buddy Rick Veitch made and Joe Q then STOLE Veitch's work, twisted it around some, threw in some wizard hyped hoaxes to promote the comic and called the whole idea their own with Jenkins and Lee credited as Sentry creators. The Jenkins story was pretty good

Then Bendis took the original mini and disassembled it Bendis made the Octopus Abortion you see oozing black blood all over the pages of Avengers comics

Totally unrecognizable from the one Veitch made

While organizing my studio recently I stumbled on a folder full of concept art for a project I worked up with Paul Jenkins called THE SENTRY. This week I’ll be running that art and telling about my (up to now unknown) role in creating the character.Paul and I were old buds, having met while he was at Mirage Studios. We worked closely together on BRAT PACK and THE MAXIMORTAL at Tundra. Paul was focused mostly on production and editing back in those days but clearly had potential as a writer. He and I had often discussed a story he wanted to develop concerning an over-the-hill guy, struggling with addiction, who had a tight relationship with his dog. Paul was trying to come up with a way to show the character’s addiction problem as a manifestation of the unconscious. At one point, if I remember correctly, Paul pitched a horror version of this plot to Steve Bissette for TABOO, although nothing came of it.It was in the late 1990’s that Paul and I came together to try and develop it into a superhero pitch for Marvel. More tomorrow. .

I never got a chance to read the complete SENTRY series after it finally came out but I did see a couple issues. It looked really good and important elements had changed considerably with the new creative team. Jenkins and I had envisioned SENTRY as a completely original mid-level superhero, on the level of IRON MAN or DAREDEVIL. In the series he became one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe; pretty much a SUPERMAN clone dressed in the requisite cape and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound etc.In the issues I saw, the retro element was scaled back too, with much more focus given to the present day SENTRY. I think that was the part of the character Paul really wanted to write and it certainly played to the strengths of Jae Lee’s dark brooding artwork. I do think those guys make a fantastic team. By an odd coincidence, I happened to read their TWO-FACE graphic novel right after I’d seen THE DARK KNIGHT movie and was struck by how much the filmmakers had lifted from it. The visual tone, the police procedural, whole scenes and many panel layouts are taken directly from Paul’s and Jae’s work

Now anyone who knows Paul Jenkins knows he can be direct and to the point. And when he called to let me know how THE SENTRY meeting had gone with Joe Quesada he immediately told me he was doing the book with Jae Lee. This set me back on my heels a little bit. I mean you hear about concepts and storylines for existing characters being hijacked by publishers and editors all the time, but not so a completely original concept!

Thing is, bringing in Jae made a lot of sense. He and Paul had done a corker of a job on an INHUMANS mini-series which had even won an Eisner. And I couldn’t fault a publisher, starved for hits, with maximizing box office appeal even if it meant me being thrown under a bus. I had plenty of other projects to keep me going and, more importantly, Paul had been there for me more than once back at Tundra. So I didn’t make a stink.

But when Paul enthusiastically went on about marketing plans being built around “Chick Rivet” I had to gently remind him that he really couldn’t use the anagram of my name and should stick to “Juan Pinkles”. Ultimately he and Marvel decided on “Artie Rosen” as their imaginary artist/creator and even brought Stan Lee in to help perpetuate the hoax. Concluded tomorrow.

I’m quite sure it was my suggestion that something so horrible happened to THE SENTRY that all memory of the event, and SENTRY himself, had to be wiped out, probably by some Marvel character on the scale of THE WATCHER. Right there Paul and I knew we had it; SENTRY’s quest for a return of his memories and powers, a solution for his absence in Marvel continuity, and motivation for an attack by his own unconscious.

We quickly ran through some of the other Marvel characters, plotting out how they would figure in to a mass amnesia. Most would have their memories erased, but some, like THE HULK, wouldn’t. And a few, like REED RICHARDS and DOCTOR DOOM, would be smart enough to figure out what happened. More tomorrow.